About White Lie
About White Lie is an English role-playing story-driven video game developed by Matthew Barnes. The player controls a protagonistic character as he traverses through the White Lie world, helping one Julia S. Lithers unravel her mysterious past. The game was written in Java using the LibGDX library and was a two-year project for the creator's A Level Computer Science course. Gameplay The gameplay of White Lie plays out similarly to that of Earthbound or Undertale; the player has the freedom of the visible map around them and are not fixed to a grid. They are free to interact with objects in-front of them and talk to NPCs. In battle, White Lie revolves around a real-time battle style that involves a player on the left and the opponent on the right side. The player and the opponent dynamically send attacks at one another in the form of icons flying across both sides of the screen. They are both limited to how many attacks they can perform at one time, as indicated by their 'Energy' level. These attacks are named Arts. Upon selecting an Art, a dice is rolled and a number from 1-6 inclusive will be selected. The strength of the Art depends on how high the rolled number is, how much strength the player has and how good the player's armour and weapon are. Contrary to other popular RPGs, White Lie seldom use random encounters. Instead, the battles that the player engages in are typically integrated into the story or are triggered by the player themselves. Saving is automatic in White Lie, and is indicated by a floppy disk icon and the title changing to 'SAVED!' for a brief period of time. In addition to that, there are a variety of other gameplay elements that White Lie adopts, such as a shoot-em-up, a platformer, a space shooter and more, giving White Lie a lot of arcade elements. Plot Chapter 6 24 years before the events of White Lie, Alys fell for and married her long-time friend, Julian Lithers. They settled down, and were planning to start a family, but Julian had suddenly disappeared. Shortly after his disappearance, Alys fell pregnant to a baby girl. She decided to name her Julia Lithers, in memory of her late father. When she was a few months old, Alys entrusted a clay dove to Julia, symbolising her love for her only daughter. She also kept a clay dove to embody the bond between the mother and her child. When Julia was a year old, Alys united Julia with a chocolate labrador puppy so that she wouldn't feel too lonely. Alys named the puppy Murphy. Along the street, there lived a boy the same age as Julia. The two quickly became friends, and grew attached to each other. They saw each other every day, and excluding Murphy, he was her first ever friend. This boy eventually turns out to be the player. When Julia was 9 years old, she was attending school. There, she met childhood friend Charin Ultio and would have an energetic science teacher named Wallace Phelps, with an odd assistant named Edward Strickland. On rare occasions, Julia's cousin and half-sister would visit. Their names are Sebastian Thomas and Lucy Stone, respectively. Sebastian would always be interested in archaeology, and Lucy would always be interested in magic and psychic powers. When Julia reached the age of 10, the player had to move away. This made her very upset, because no matter how long she would wait, he would never return. Eventually, darkness started to pile onto Julia as more started to happen, such as Wallace and Edward's disappearance and her mother's death. To cope with the darkness inside her, she pushed all of her negative feelings to the corner of her mind. This corner eventually grew, until it formed a separate personality parallel to Julia's. This personality was called 'Jinks'. When Julia was 16 years old, the darkness had a greater control over her. She had fallen into mild drug abuse, and had little to no future for herself. When she finished school, Jinks took control of her body and lead her into the forest. But, just as Jinks was about to fully take over Julia's consciousness, Julia took out her clay dove that was entrusted to her by her mother. She found the will to fight back, but it wasn't strong enough. Her best wasn't enough as Jinks completely enveloped her in darkness. To ensure that Julia's willpower doesn't counter her darkness, Jinks made Julia's body go unconscious. Julia was now stuck in an endless dream that only Jinks had the power to wake her up from, effectively putting her in a deep coma. Prologue The player appears in the game, and Jinks, the creator of the world, gives the player a quick tutorial on how to play the game before she sends him off to Newsilver. PIVOT route The player then arrives at Newsilver, and meets the tutorial dog, Murphy. Murphy then teaches the player how to fight and play the game. The very first person the player met was Jeremy, a business-man who helped the player traverse the asylum for the first time. Jeremy, after learning that the player did not share his ideals for what was to come, fought the player and lost, with Jinks finishing him off. The player went ahead, and met Julia. He accepted to help her recover her lost past. The next day, the player met Charin, who was looking for her lost book. The player helped her by searching for her reserved library book, Red with Vengeance, and helping her against Alys. After the book was given to her by Julia, it was soon discovered that the book was a magic book and had the power to control its owner's mind. It did just that, as Charin was blasted to death by the magic of her own book. Around a week after that, the player, Julia and Murphy went to a science convention. There, they met Wallace and Edward, who took them on a few surreal trips to alternate universes. After they returned to their original world, they quickly learned that Wallace and Edward are fugitives, and they decide to hastily find them. Upon reaching them, Wallace commits suicide off a cliff to free himself of the guilt of experimenting on young boys in the hopes of achieving eternal life. A few days following those events, Sebastian and Lucy find the Enigmatic Message and decide to decode it. It stated that there was someone of interest named the 'lawbreaker' in Newsilver. Sebastian also found a note from Jinks, stating the truth of the world he lives in. After arriving there, they meet the player and Julia. During his time in Newsilver, Sebastian contemplates over Jinks' words and who the 'lawbreaker' could be. Eventually, he decides to confirm his thoughts by taking the player to the Enigmatic Message and getting him to strike it with his weapon. The player does so, and the game performs a manual override, effectively giving Sebastian control over the game. In a fit of anger over realising the truth about himself and the world, he attacks the player and loses. He then realises the player's role in the game and supports him before vanishing from the game's memory. The game is now stuck in limbo, and Murphy decides to find the player. After meeting the player, Murphy takes the player through the Deep Asylum, a pathway to The Outside, which is a region outside the boundaries of the game itself. It is there where the player reaches Culmination and faces off against Jinks in an attempt to free Julia of the darkness she is in. The player ultimately fails and is brutally massacred. HOPE route When the player starts the game again, Jinks puts the player through Chapters 1-4 before facing off with him again. This time, Murphy admits his mistake and promises the player that this time, they will win, as long as the player makes the right choices along the way. The player plays through Chapters 1-4, making the choices that saves the characters' lives and gaining their light. The player then faces off against Jinks, and is again, defeated. Jinks also builds a firewall between the player and the unconscious Julia so that no contacts can be made. However, the player remembers the power of light that he had accumulated from the previous chapters, and he becomes the Light Player. Murphy appears on a big screen in Culmination, and explains that he had injected programs into the game to break the firewall, therefore the player is now using the light of the unconscious Julia to fight against Jinks. Jinks, in regret, destroys Murphy. Moments before Murphy's death, he gives his final wish to the player: that he takes care of Julia. Now, in a complete state of anger and fear, Jinks unleashes her full power onto the player. However, due to the power of light, the player is immune to all of her attacks. Eventually, the player finishes Julia with his newfound powers. After defeating Jinks, the unconscious Julia awakens and thanks the player. She explains that there's not much time to talk, and that she's unsure whether or not her physical body can support life anymore. Nevertheless, Julia promises the player that she will look for him in the real world before embracing him. All of the player's experiences are freed from the game's memory, as is Julia, leaving the only real component of the game left: the player himself. The player eventually leaves the game through a terminal. Epilogue The player is sitting at a cliff, looking out at the sky. Julia finds the player, and can be seen coming towards him from behind. The player turns back to see his old childhood friend, Julia, standing behind him. Development White Lie was developed over the course of 2 years, and was programmed using the LibGDX library in the Java language. There was no funding; everything used in the game is either royalty-free or created by the creator himself. The game was designed to be reminiscent of old 90's RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Earthbound. It was also designed to employ a modern twist to battle styles used by said RPGs to make them more engaging on today's platforms.